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Okay, I referred to social and cultural and economic life in 18th century Europe, in old regime Europe, with the adjective "traditional" and I emphasize it here. This is a main point of the lecture. Traditional. What do I mean by tradition? I mean literally that life was shaped by the traditions of the past. People in 18th century Europe knew one thing, for sure. They knew that their lives are going to be the same or very similar to the lives of their ancestors, to the lives of their parents. And their parents' life was very similar to the lives of their parents and so on and so forth backward. There was little expectation of dramatic change. They did not expect their future to be very different from their present. Think about how that is different from us. We don't know the future. Who knows the future? Nobody knows the future, but we know one thing for certain. Our future is going to be very different from our present. For us, change is a fundamental part of life. Everything changes all the time. I just bought a new iPhone, I don't know what, two years ago, and within a few months, it was already obsolete or too slow. I had to get a new one. We change all the time. Right? You don't know what life is going to be like for you after college. But you know it's going to be very different from your life at present. That is very, very different from the life that Europeans lived in the 18th century. The fact that for us, change is a part of our very existence, that's a result of the age of revolutions. It's the age of revolutions that will introduce change as a constitutive, fundamental element of modern life. But for these 18th century Europeans, it was not so. Their lives were shaped by the customs and traditions of the past. Let's look at it more in detail. Life was traditional in several ways. Hang on here... there we go. First of all, society. You know, there was this hierarchy, right? That we already spoke about. These three estates. You were born into them. It was hard to move between them. And it's been that way for centuries. Indeed it was derived from the Middle Ages. The First Estate, the clergy, those who pray, the Second Estate, the nobility, those who fight the Third Estate, everyone else, those who work, right? That kind of static, static social structure, with little mobility. That comes from tradition. And so if you're a Third Estate, you knew that you're not going to become a noble and you're going to become a clergyman. Right? And so on and so forth. The economy was agrarian by and large; most people made a living from the land and agricultural techniques were slow to evolve and develop. So most of the economy was subsistence. You grew what you needed in order to live. And you didn't have, you didn't have surplus. You didn't, you didn't have enough left over to sell on the market and make a profit. You grew what you needed to live. If you didn't grow enough what you needed to live, then you would not live. You die of hunger. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but you get the idea. Old regime Europe was traditional in one more way, political. The political form that was dominant in 18th century Europe was monarchy. There were different kind of monarchies. Again, I'll talk about that next lecture when we talk about the monarchy. But it was not a Democratic or a Republican way of life. It was a monarchical way of life. And here, here we get into some of the most interesting things. Life was religious, local, and illiterate. It's traditional in that way. What do I mean by that? Local, first of all, most people died where they were born. They did not... that's very different from us. If we were in class now in person, I'd ask you to raise your hand and tell me where you're from. And chances are you've moved around and you're going to move around a lot more. Hell, I'm not talking to you from the US right now. I'm talking to you from from a completely different country, right? Most people had little familiarity with the world beyond the village and their kinfolk. Language. There was still no national languages. So in the country of France, not everybody spoke French. They spoke very local, long dialects, sorry, local dialects. And often they had a hard time understanding each other between regions of France. Indeed, it is the French Revolution and more, more so Napoleon that will impose, by force, by law a national language on all inhabitants of France. But before the French Revolution, this was not the case. That most important form of identity was the family in the village. Most people, if they traveled in Europe on foot, they encountered somebody else on the road and they asked them, "Hey stranger, where are you from? Who are you?" Most people would not say their nationality. We today would say, oh, I'm American, I'm Hungarian, I'm Japanese, I'm whatever, right. That's not how people identified back then. Most people would say the name of their village or the name of their kinfolk, you know, their father, that kind of thing. Where they come from, what village they come from. And they would say, maybe perhaps what religious persuasion they belong to. You know? But the most important form of identity was family and the village life. Life, culture was traditional in the sense that it was religious. Now what I mean by that is that everyday life was punctuated by religious rituals. For example, the sound of bells, people went to work in the fields to the sound of bells and bells told them when it was time, bells from the church. Bells told them when it was time to take a break for lunch and bells told them when to come back home from the fields. They went every Sunday to church. There were baptisms in local church and weddings in local church and funerals in a local church. So everyday life was punctuated by religious ritual. Now, that does not mean that everyone was religious. That's not what I'm saying. I don't know what was in people's hearts and minds. I don't know if they had real faith. Listen, most people were illiterate. They left no record behind them. The fact that they went to church does not mean that they believed. It means it was the custom. I don't know what they believed. We will never know, right? Because they left no record behind them. But what I do know is that religion, religious institutions, and religious ritual was a constant part of everyday life, whether people believed in it or not. The culture was illiterate for the most part, and most people could not read and write. Although by the late 18th century, the number of people in Europe who can read and write is rising steadily. Women can read and write less. But their number, the number of literate women is also rising by the late 18th century. Books were a luxury. Most people could not afford them. Although most people were familiar, even if they could not read, they were familiar with passages, at least from the Bible, at least by heart because they went to church enough. You know they learned that if they had even one year of schooling, then they learn, you know, passages from the Bible. And it's an interesting thing, the history of books, and the history of reading. There were all kinds of things back then that you wouldn't imagine. For example, when you worked in the fields, sometimes the farmers would pay someone to stand there and read, the one literate member of the community, to stand there and read out loud from, from little cheap books. They were called blue books, that were sold by traveling salesman in various localities. And they told stories of crime and scandal and a little bit of pornography, you know, things like that. So they would pay people to, it's kind of like a 18th century radio, right? You work while listening. They would pay somebody to read out or maybe read from the Bible or read from the news if they had a newspaper. Also, when you went into cities, the big cities in Paris, for example, you could go to the local coffee shop. The coffee shop had copies of newspapers and you could pay someone to read to you the news if you could not read it out for yourself. Many noble people, for example, that had some money were illiterate also. So they would go to a coffee shop, pay someone, and then they would listen to the news, right? That's functioning in an illiterate culture. So in all this way. But really the fundamental thing is that there was little expectation of change. Life was shaped by tradition. That's why I call it the traditional society. Now a little bit of fun facts. Now if I, let's lighten up the atmosphere a little bit. Let me ask you this. Let me see here. Okay, given what everything I've described about life in the traditional way of life in 18th century Europe. What do you think was the average age of marriage? I'm gonna wait for a second. What was the average age of marriage? Well, usually when I ask this in person, students say things like 16, 14. Once I had a student say 11 and I went "Holy, 11. Are you nuts?" Anyway. But they say 15-16, whatever, 18. But here's the surprising answer. The average age of marriage in 1789 in France was 26 and a half, 26.5 for, for a bride and 28.5 for the groom. The reason is, is because in order to get married, you needed a dowry. The lower you are in the social scale, the longer it took to collect enough property to have a dowry. And also people, you know, kids were expensive, children. So you wanted to marry late. It was expensive to support them, and so on and so forth. So you married late in order to have less kids. Nobles tended to marry much younger, in arranged marriages like 13, 14, 15. Speaking of having kids, what do you think... what was the most important form of contraception? There's no condoms in the 18th century. So what's the most important form of contraception? Anybody know? Nothing. I'm hearing a deafening silence. Okay. Students usually say something like pulling out. In the Latin, it's called coitus interruptus. But that is, let me tell you, that's an unreliable form of contraception. So no, the most important form of contraception was breastfeeding. Now, I don't remember the exact biology of it, but when women breastfeed, it either produces a certain hormone or impedes the production of a certain hormone. But whatever it is, It's not impossible, but it's much harder to get pregnant while you're breastfeeding. So breastfeeding was a form of contraception. Many women of the lower estates, especially from the poor peasantry, they would hire themselves as wet nurses to noble families. And in that way, they would get a little bit of extra income, but also they would space out their own pregnancies, right? So these are some interesting fun facts about traditional life in Europe in the 18th century. Anyway, let's stop here. And in the next segment, I want to talk about the Atlantic system.

Lecture 1.1 - Part 4

From Ronen Steinberg January 19th, 2021  

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